Gooey Ashes
by FeatheredMask
Summary: Ludwig expected to go to medical school. He never expected a flu outbreak to turn into something so dangerous. He certainly never expected to be the designated doctor of a ragtag group of classmates just trying to survive the zombie apocalypse.
1. DONT OPEN DEAD INSIDE

**Gooey Ashes**

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><p>It started slow. Not the kind of slow that lets you prepare. No, the kind of slow that went undetected, the kind where everyone was sure they'd have plenty of time. So why not put it off, let the rest of the world deal with it?<p>

The first to close were schools. With too many kids out sick and a high risk of contagion, schools closed for the rest of the foreseeable week, as they'd done with widespread bugs before. Confident the majority of kids would be bright and bubbly once more by the end of the month.

With kids away from a main source of information - away from society - few bothered to look beyond the evening news on biased forecasts full of blue-eyed blondes. Riots in other parts of the world received vague mentions. Vines and YouTube videos spiked in the supernatural and horror genres. Independent reporters on Twitter put out a cry of what was going on, but of course, no one on the internet ever changed the world.

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><p>"C'mon, Lud! It's not like anyone's gonna get us in trouble! What's Vati going to do? Ground us?"<p>

"You shouldn't say things like that," Ludwig sighed, getting out of the car to follow his laughing brother. With their father hospitalized, they'd be taking care of themselves until further notice. He sped up when that laugh choked.

"I'm okay! The awesome me will never be defeated!" Gilbert assured him, stumbling and righting himself. He pulled at his jacket, looking down to find what he'd tripped over. "Aha!" he proclaimed, scooping it up to hold it up to silhouette against the sun. "Hammer, you shall pay for tripping the awesome me!"

"Gil, stop waving that around," Ludwig groaned, snatching the tool from his brother's hand, holding it high above where the older couldn't reach. "That's dangerous, you have no idea how balanced or attached the end is-"

Ludwig raised an eyebrow at Gilbert's sudden tensing, watching those red eyes go wide. "What is it?"

Gilbert sucking in a breath, and hissed, "The hammer, Lud. The hammer. There's blood on that thing."

Ludwig dropped the tool as if it had caught fire, trusting his brother too much to risk it.

Gilbert barked another laugh. "You fell for it! You actually believed that! Shit, bloodied hammer - that'd be fucked up!"

Ludwig scowled, shooting a wary check to the rusty tool. His face lit bright red. "I could have dropped it on my foot," he retorted. "That's not funny!"

"Is too!" Gilbert called over his shoulder, already heading across the deserted parking lot. Gum dotted much of the black tar, a few mechanical pencils scattered around, half-finished cigarettes stomped down. He kicked away a tampon applicator, watching it bounce up onto the curb and under the metal fence.

"Gilbert..." Ludwig sighed, shaking his head. A stickler for the rules, his older brother was not. Nevertheless, he went after Gilbert, and followed him over the fence with a grunt. He frowned, watching his brother saunter past the bolted down picnic tables to the doors. "You know those doors don't open from the outside..." He trailed off, Gilbert grinning all too smugly as the doors opened with a simple push. He sighed. "Why do I bother?"

The door closed with little sound behind them, cushioned well on recent costly renovations. Shut inside where the gentle spring breeze couldn't reach them, Ludwig wrinkled his nose, grimacing in disgust. Sure, it was a school-he expected it to smell bad, but it must have been closed long enough for him to forget what it was like.

Sickness clung to the air, thick and heady. He waved a hand in front of his face, fanning away the worst of it, walking after his skipping brother. Hormones, hair spray, and Axe deodorant tinted the walls, collecting in what many students lovingly referred to as _eau de ass_. Today, and the few short days before schools closed for health safety, sweat, vomit, pus, and digestive distress was the scent of the afternoon. The smell of disease.

From the looks of it, Gilbert wasn't as bothered as Ludwig-or perhaps he just hid it better. Or it was a greater tolerance to those kinds of things. He didn't doubt that his brother had flooded the locker bays with an overdose of Axe more than a few times in their years here. The older brother belonged in a group of tricksters proudly bragging the title of the Bad Touch Trio, while the younger kept to his studies.

"You could've volunteered at the hospital," Gilbert goaded him, his voice carrying like the step of their boots on the linoleum floors. "I thought you wanted to be a pre-med!"

"I don't have any training. I'd get in the way. Besides, who would keep you out of trouble if you're home alone?"

For Ludwig, fun and friends came secondary to schoolwork, responsibilities, and family. He had passing acquaintances with classmates, polite and to the point where no one tried to get very close to him. Kiku, the Japanese classmate who tended to speak soft and flat, he considered a friend. He enjoyed their small exchanges and silent working in the same area. They sat together at lunch, usually in quiet unless another acquaintance decided to join them. Often, this was the Trio.

Ugh, that trio of friends. Ludwig sighed just thinking about them. They made him feel like an old man waving a cane at them yelling to get off his lawn. Individually, they weren't so irksome. Francis had his good points, most pointedly being the most mature of any of them-when he wasn't flipping girls' skirts, anyway. Antonio sometimes popped up for little reason at all, hanging around him and talking like they'd been friends for much longer than with his brother. Aiming to go into medicine, Ludwig viewed the diabetic Spaniard as an invaluable fountain of practical experience.

The third member...well, Gilbert was his brother. Ludwig would be lying if he said he wasn't biased.

Case in point. Ludwig jerked his head in the direction of a series of clangs and bangs. Seeing his brother bashing down a row of lockers with someone's lost phone was little cause for alarm, if a headache. He groaned, and shouted above the din, "Do you have any idea of the damage you're causing?"

"It's a Nokia, Lud!" Gilbert shot him a grin, turning around to continue his way down, just backwards. "These things are like bricks, it's not gonna get a single scratch!"

Ludwig sighed, dragging his hand over his face in exasperation. The clanging stopped. Gilbert stalled in a dark section of the school, sunlight from the copious windows along the walls unable to reach so far.

Ludwig came to stand beside Gilbert, and scoffed. They stood in front of the doors to the band room, metal doors guarding one of the only rooms large enough to accommodate the large class and their instruments. Someone had taken red spray paint to it, and in messy, dripping letters.

**DONT OPEN DEAD INSIDE**

Ludwig snorted at the graffiti message. Beside him, he heard Gilbert gulp. He glanced at him, raising an eyebrow. "You're scared of this? Really? Isn't this from The Walking Dead, in, what was it, the first episode?"

Gilbert choked a forced laugh. "J-ja, what a throwback. Listen, Lud," he changed his tune, turning away from the door. "We should get going, get dinner started, get working on those packets the teaches gave us-"

Ludwig shook his head, a rare grin coming on his own face at his skittish behavior. "Gil, it's nothing," he interrupted. "It's a joke. Zombies aren't going to jump out and attack us if we open the door."

"You don't know that," Gilbert defended, eyes wide, shooting glances at the door. Ludwig had to keep himself from laughing; he was actually whispering, thinking something would hear them. "We need to get out of here, A-sap."

Ludwig chuckled, even more so as his brother flinched when he took another step forward. The smell of stale sweat was stronger here; no surprise, considering how this was the band room, full of people dressed in heavy uniforms lugging around metal instruments half the time. "There's nothing to be afraid of," he repeated. "I'll show you."

Someone had tied the doors shut with a combination of zipties, duct tape, and a metal bar. Ludwig took off the bar, and Gilbert swiped it from his hands before he could toss it on the ground, holding it like a baseball bat, ready to defend himself from the horrors trapped inside. He stopped himself from rolling his eyes, snapping the ties with a few sharp yanks in just the right way. Then he picked at the duct tape, unraveling it from the door handles.

The doors thumped a few times from his pulling. He could've sworn he heard a music stand fall over inside.

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><p><em>Author's Notes<em>

Merry Christmas, for those reading at the publish date.

Pairings are [mostly] undecided. Planned main characters: Ludwig, Alfred, Gilbert, Antonio, Lovino, Feliciano, Natalya (Belarus).


	2. The Boy Who Cried Zombie

This chapter: zombies, Francis's intro

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><p><strong>Gooey Ashes<strong>

He could've sworn he heard a music stand fall over inside. He wasn't sure. Finding out the exact origin of the sound didn't top his list of priorities when a horde of _things_ burst screaming and clawing from the band room.

In hindsight, he should have brought a gun. Or two. But you never just so happened to have a gun on you when your brother decided to go on a romp through your high school. Perhaps, in _further _hindsight, he should have registered for a concealed weapon license. But, then again, Ludwig didn't know the first thing about guns. He may have had some on his arms, but, he was loathe to admit it, he didn't want to feel flesh and blood crunching under his fists.

Logic and a drive to protect overran the instinct to freeze up and scream. Ludwig sprang into action, years of his father's military-style drilling finally giving practical results, knocking a frozen Gilbert out of the lunge of a grey attacker. The brothers skidded on the floor, sweat and stale grime grasping onto Gilbert's jacket. The younger brother's collision was cushioned by the other, lending to quicker recovery time.

A grunt, a crunch, too close for comfort, Ludwig jumped to his feet with haste he hadn't seen in his daily suicide sprints. Grabbing Gilbert's arm, he yanked him along, not hearing his yells over the moans and screeches of whatever was after them. It was with a single-track mind he raced through the maze-like hallways. Sickening splats and suctioning noises rammed on their tail.

"The fence!" Gilbert's shout came like a faint echo to him. "Jump the fence!"

This wasn't a time for questioning. Trust would have to do.

The two zipped around the tables set out in the student lounge. Ludwig wasted a precious few seconds pulling open the heavy door, crashes of tall tables and tall chairs upended, and Gilbert skittered past him into the sunlight. They both scrambled to the end of the small picnic area, their minds on the goal of getting over that metal fence. Ludwig landed in a barrel roll, knocking himself right onto the road. Gilbert wasn't so lucky, landing on his hands and knees with a grunt, followed by a short stream of "fuck"s from the scrapes.

"Gil!" Ludwig sprang up, running over to pull his brother to his feet. They skittered away from the fence, but slowed. Mouths agape, they stared.

People. Students, from the school uniform. They had the markers of the flu virus - heavy breathing, drooping bloodshot eyes, grey pallor, sweat matting their hair to their foreheads. Exaggerated symptoms, worse than their father was that morning. Ludwig covered his face with his sleeve, grimacing. It was the smell of disease from earlier, this time stronger, bubbling from the clawing students trapped behind the fence in waves. The students didn't seem to realize they could climb, instead trying to reach through the gaps between the wire, biting at the metal like animals.

The groaning captured Ludwig's attention. "O, Gott, they're in pain," he moaned, as Gilbert claimed, "Scheisse, Lud, I told you. Zombies. Gott, zombies!"

Ludwig nearly smacked him. "Are you serious?" he snapped at him, glaring at him with disgust. "These are real people, Gilbert! Our classmates, kids with actual friends and family who must be worried sick about them! And you have the gall to make a zombie joke?"

Gilbert raised his hands in front of him, stepping back in alarm. "Whoa, hey," he chuckled; a nervous mannerism. "Did you not just see those things attack us?"

He snarled at his brother. "They're delusional," he spat. "Delirious. They don't know what is going on. You went rambling on about playing in a baseball game when you got your wisdom teeth out, we didn't call you a zombie then. Be a decent human being and give these people that same respect!"

"Lud, Lud. Lud."

He kept going. "We need to call 911, get an ambulance over here, get them to a hospital where they can be treated."

"Lud." This time, Gilbert grabbed his hand. Slowly, his voice shaky, he said, "We can call an ambulance." He added stipulations: "But, you have to make it from the car, and we're driving out of here as soon as you get a hold of someone. I'm not staying here any longer than I have to. Less than that."

"I..." He hesitated, then gave in with a nod. "Ja, that's acceptable."

Gilbert wasted no time dragging them both to the car, keeping an eye on the ill students, no matter the little flinches and squeaks he made whenever one of them moved too suddenly. He took the driver's seat, clicking in the keys to start the car, and buckling in at Ludwig's pointed stare.

"Hello? I need an ambulance..."

Gilbert tapped his fingers impatiently on the wheel as Ludwig made the call, and snapped up, "Great! We're going grocery shopping," as soon as he hung up. Before his brother could question the impulse decision, the car was speeding across the parking lot, the squeal of the tires from rough turns and ill-timed brakes drowning out the immediate protest.

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><p>O, America! Land of the free, and home of the-<p>

"Aïe! Don't you dare move that sculpture! Ma mère spent more than you earn in a year to have a professional carve that ice, and I will not be lenient if it is chipped before la fête!"

-overbearing French teenagers with more money than they know what to do with.

The terrace buzzed with activity, filled with prim-and-proper butlers and maids dressed the part. Gardeners pruned and clipped at bushes and hedges, uprooted last-minute weeds and filled in the holes with only the best, brushed through the tulips and roses for any upkeep needed. Ice sculptures littered the area on grand pedestals and delicate tables. Delicacies waited just inside, kept cool, prepared to be set out the moment guests arrived. Lounge chairs by the pool. Plenty of cushioned chairs and love seats, but not too many.

"Perfection," Francis admired, complimenting himself. A plate with an array of drinks offered itself to him, and he plucked away the champagne flute to taste. He gave a throwaway glance to the servant. "Serve this champagne, mais, in a tulip glass," he ordered, replacing the glass on the plate. "Pas la flûte. Don't give any guest a flute. Our guests are high class, not middle class."

First-born son to wealthy French parents gave Francis much to go for in life. He had it all - health, fortune, and the fame that came with being a budding name in fashion with connections. Parents that doted on him, servants to care for every one of his needs, and the money to buy anything he could plausibly have thought up. 'Twas a shame his parents had him go to public school instead of tutors, but it had the benefit of teaching him English through immersion. Friends had come with it all, and although they weren't the type his parents would approve long-term for networking, the close socializing and the fact they weren't into anything illegal allowed him to keep tabs on them.

However, no one cares about this long-winded, boring type of exposition. So we come back to Francis, lavishing in pride at orchestrating this high-end party.

"Yo, Frannie!"

Fortunately, we don't have to hear anymore ego-boosting bragging.

Francis cringed - no, no, he didn't cringe, cringing was not photogenic - Francis sighed in despair. He turned around just in time to see one of his best friends jump over an ice sculpture, giving him a brief heart attack, sending him straight to an early grave.

"Gil, qu'est-ce que tu fais?!"

So maybe I lied. Maybe the insufferable bastard didn't die.

Gilbert bypassed the question, coming to a stop in front of Francis, and with wide eyes, announced, "The zombie apocalypse is starting!"

"Apocalypse..?" An exasperated sigh caught his attention, and Francis looked over his friend's shoulder to see that the younger brother had been dragged along. Scruffy and sweaty, the two of them looked very out of place on the pristine terrace. "Any reason why you decided to come here, mere hours before my parents' business party, to inform me of this news?"

"Yeah, you're my best friend, and you've got the most supplies-" Gilbert stopped, his face falling to disbelief. "You don't believe me. What the fuck, man!"

Francis gave him a withering glance. "We're not exactly at Newton's famed end-of-the-world 2060 yet, and you're a few years late to the 2012 debacle... Excuses-moi for taking your words with a grain of salt. If you haven't noticed, I'm busy, and don't want anything to do with your antics today. I heard Toni's spending the day with some of the lower classmen, go bug them."

"Francis," Gilbert grit the name between the teeth, but his eyes threatened tears. "Are any of your servants sick?"

"If they were, I should hope they stayed home," Francis said dismissively.

Gilbert nodded. "Stay safe these next few days. Keep your phone on you, and call me if anything happens. I'm serious."

Francis waved them off, turning away to survey the progress. Gilbert turned and went back the way they came, Ludwig following like an obedient puppy. "We're grabbing Toni, and dragging him back home. Then we prepare."

"Prepare?" Ludwig parroted. Then he sighed. "I'll do whatever I can to help."

"You're an awesome little brother. Okay, Toni's probably with that one junior he dotes on. I think he's got a twin, actually..."

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><p>Lights out.<p>

Gilbert had demanded the curfew as soon as sunset hit, even forbidding Ludwig from touching his phone. No lamps. No screens. No candles. No flashlights. He resigned himself to sitting on the couch in the dark, watching the last of the light outside the window, the curtains pushed slightly to the side.

No lights, no sounds, and be ready to run at any moment.

Those were the rules for tonight. To settle his brother's nerves, Ludwig easily complied, fully dressed, not questioning Gilbert's antics. Two backpacks had been gingerly filled with necessities, stuffed with water bottles, food, a few pairs of socks and underwear, and first aid supplies. A small bag of hard candies had been included as well, citing Antonio's occasional lows.

Of course, Ludwig went with all of it, even if a nagging voice in the back of his head insisted that if there really was an apocalypse coming, if they haven't found Antonio by now, they weren't going to find him at all. He still felt horrible when he recalled the grief-stricken expression on his brother's face when Antonio's mother got across, in broken English, and her son wasn't home at the time. She hadn't been able to tell where he'd gone, except that it was planned to be a couple places. Gilbert's phone calls couldn't get through either, voice mail full. Texts, so far, hadn't been replied to.

Blue eyes stared out over the expansive apartment lot, other windows turning out their lights as the night progressed. Ludwig politely turned his gaze away from one window, the shadows of two bodies coiled together projected on the curtains. A family came back home after a long day, the mother yawning as she tried to keep her two children together. A middle-aged man sat out on his balcony, swilling beer. All in all, normal.

Casting his regard farther out, the road along the apartments leading to the bustle of stores was crowded, more so than just the stray car. More vans packed to the brim with necessities. Was it that close to vacation season? They must be taking advantage of the school closings.

A gun shot echoed across the lot. A few lights turned on. Ludwig rolled his eyes. As normal.

In the bedroom, Gilbert fumbled with hooking a gun and its ammo to an old military belt. He gulped, and allowed himself a whisper, "It's starting."

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><p><em>Author's Notes<em>

Gilbert, the idiot, the prankster, the only one who realizes what's going on... These jerks who do parkour and read up on zombie survival strategies; yup, they're the ones who'll have the best chance of being prepared.

I almost included Lovi's intro at the end here, but a few things need to happen before that. Almost gave the German bros a dog, too.

Everyone will die. Well, maybe not Luddy. Just everyone he knows and loves.


End file.
